


in this cold heart

by ont



Series: mockingbird [13]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Adoption, Alcoholism, Angst, Character Study, Fertility Issues, Harry pov, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Suicidal Ideation, ex awkwardness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-04 18:10:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15152768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ont/pseuds/ont
Summary: Harry and Zayn come out the other side of their difficult fertility battle. (sliding doors verse)





	in this cold heart

KENSINGTON, SEPTEMBER 25, 2027

Twelve days after Harry is told he’s pregnant again, at the (in the case of his inhospitable, uncooperative uterus) advanced age of thirty-three, he finds himself in the drawing room of the Kensington home of his very rich friend, Douglas.

He’s left Zayn at home in Malibu to spend some time with his extant children. The kids have been with them on weekends again all through September, but Zayn hasn’t had any alone time with them in quite a while, and he only saw them occasionally this summer due to Harry’s hamster wheel IVF schedule and ensuing months-long miscarriages-induced nervous breakdown. Harry didn’t mean to play the neglectful stepfather, but he rather thought the children wouldn’t be amused by the two of them running off to the doctor’s office nearly every day, or Harry hiding in the bedroom to weep for hours while Zayn lay curled up next to him petting his hair.

He couldn’t possibly be fun stepdad Harry, who he loves being. There would be no impromptu trips to the beach, or taking Mia to exclusive youth acting camps he heard about through his costars. Since the first miscarriage in April, he’s spent most of his time in between doomed pregnancies day-drinking in a dressing gown and ordering (via his lawyers) C&D letters to anyone who prints an article about him with a single shred of untruth to it, no matter how mundane. _‘Harry Styles likes red flavored Starbursts best!’_ ‘To whom it may concern: We represent Mr. Harry Styles...'

And when he has been pregnant, he’s either been laying in bed petrified of moving, or doing very gentle Pilates interspersed with hours of meditation. So not the funnest Harry, no. Really more the least fun Harry he could possibly be.

Zayn, for his part, has been a sullen, scattered mess, going to three AA meetings a week and smoking like he’s about to face a firing squad. It had been better to not subject Mia and Amir to the grim realities of the past few months — at least not in the summer, when they haven’t got school or activities to escape to.

Everyone in this drawing room is drinking brandy besides him, but Harry has sort of a hysterical thought in his head that it wouldn’t matter if he did. Surely he’s going to lose this baby, too. You don’t lose three pregnancies in a row without beginning to assume that’s just the way it’s going to go for you. He’d already given up on the whole idea by the time this tadpole inside him made its presence known.

Besides, the babies he lost were genetic marvels, their immune systems bolstered by science, their implantation likelihood increased by gene therapy, their very essence engineered in a sterile white lab from the best of Harry’s eggs and the best of Zayn’s sperm. This accidental, natural baby, made from some everyday egg of his and left to wander the hostile desert of his uterus unarmed — it doesn’t stand a chance.

It hasn’t gone yet, though. He checks dispassionately every morning, as if checking the weather in the newspaper. No bleeding yet. Highs in the fifties.

Harry is ten weeks pregnant now. It isn’t lost on him that in two more, he’ll be in the safe zone. Highly unlikely that he’ll miscarry after that, but to let his guard down and then have the dagger of a fourth loss shoved between his ribs — he thinks the optimist in him would break apart like a biscuit in a glass of milk. Collapse into sand and blow away.

There is the other baby, though. She’s here already, so she can’t break his heart by dying inside him. And she’s precious, her eyes impossibly dark against her lambent amber skin, her nose a wee button. She likes them, too. Since they began the adoption paperwork, Harry and Zayn have been visiting her at her foster mum’s house near-daily to play with her, and she’s already started to giggle and smile for them.

“So early,” Harry exclaims with deep pride, as if she’s his own. “She’s a prodigy.”

When he holds her, he feels less shattered. This would be enough, he tells himself. I don’t need to have Zayn’s baby. This one needs me almost as much as I need her.

He wanders around Douglas’s drawing room, looking at the splendid paintings hanging on the walls. All originals, from some of the finest artists of the last few centuries. Harry’s rich, but Douglas is on another level. His mother is a countess.

The two of them met when Harry was a prince, then became reacquainted at a Sotheby’s auction years later. They’d been impressed by each other’s taste, and gone to discuss art over drinks at the bar. Zayn, who had tagged along, was made terribly jealous by the lively conversation Harry carried on with Douglas, and fucked him very well that night in their hotel. Took him from behind and over the side of the bed like a cheap whore.

Harry loved it. He loves jealous Zayn. He likes to let older men put their hands on his shoulders and hips at parties just so Zayn will dart through the crowd like a black cat and slip a possessive arm around his waist. He made sure to remind him that night in the hotel, though, that his interest in Douglas was purely social. He doesn’t like milky-skinned posh boys with spines made of custard. He likes Zayn. He likes his thick, musical accent and the toughness of his hands, his angelic voice, the set of his jaw, how he softens when he laughs.

They haven’t touched as much lately. It’s Harry’s fault, he keeps pushing him away: he cries during sex and jumps at small nudges. He feels like he might be losing his mind, a bit, and he’s too afraid to be honest about it with anyone but Zayn, who he thinks he’s really demanded quite enough of at this point. But Zayn has been unfailingly patient with him.

He’s come to England alone partially to give Zayn a break. Zayn wanted to come along, but Harry was insistent — no, spend time with your kids. I’ll be fine.

He is fine, really. Decades of fame at the highest echelons have left him skilled in the art of walking wounded. He just wakes up every morning, rubs some Kiehl’s into his T-zone and faces the new day. Besides, the little baby needs him.

She hasn’t got a name yet. Her foster mum calls her Naomi, but Harry doesn’t think that suits her. He keeps a list in his head and doesn’t dare write it down. The adoption could still not go through, after all. He thinks he’s got enough money and lawyers to make sure it does, but one never knows. She could be the fourth baby he loses. The fifth. Who knows.

“Harold,” Douglas says from the couch.

Harry turns from the Rothko he was admiring and looks over. All four of them are looking at him, sat on the leather couches with the lazy posture of English aristocracy.

“Yeah,” Harry says.

“What was that film you made a few years back? You were Interpol?”

“Oh, the spy film? It was an adaptation. _The Looking Glass War._ ”

Duncan’s friend George nods. “Le Carré.”

“Correct,” Harry says.

“Great writer.”

“He’s very good, yeah.”

“Is he still alive?”

“No idea.”

“Have some brandy,” Douglas says, offering the bottle.

“Can’t,” Harry says. _I’m knocked up, at least for now._ “On a cleanse.”

“Always on some sort of cleanse, you are,” Douglas says.

“I like my colon immaculate,” Harry says drily.

This is met with laughter; Buckley chokes on his brandy. “Don’t we all?” he says, once he’s recovered.

 

*

 

When Harry’s back in his hotel room, he calls Zayn. He’s staying in a stately old place, lush in its anachronisms, the sort of place that’s felt no need to make any significant change, no pressure, no hurry. New technology abounds — he can draw a perfectly 83° bath from a transparent panel on the bedside table without setting foot in the bathroom — but the phone by the bed is an old corded landline. Harry can’t remember the last time he dialed a number this way.

He paces as it rings, tangling his finger in the cord.

“Hullo?” Zayn says.

“Hey,” says Harry. “It’s the old ball and chain.”

He laughs. “Hi Styles.”

“Hi. I’m back in my room.”

“Oh, good. I just got home from the marina, took the kids out on the boat.”

“Are they in earshot?”

“Nah, watching TV.”

“Is Amir still upset with you?”

Zayn makes a birdlike throat-clearing noise. “Eh, you know ‘ow he is.”

“It’s my fault,” Harry murmurs.

“It‘s not, love. I’ll explain it to him when he’s older. But I did let them know it’s been a tough time for us, that it’s got to do with medical issues, and we both love ‘em and appreciate their patience.”

“Good.”

The line goes quiet for a moment. Harry thinks of the ocean between them, the depth and the breadth of it. He imagines wading into it, letting the Channel take him, letting it toss him about however it likes. He imagines ending up on the shore of Malibu a year or so later, miraculously alive, sprawling at Zayn’s feet like a mermaid.

“How’re you feeling?” Zayn says.

Harry closes his eyes. He wants to be back in his arms, but he thinks Zayn must need a break from him. All they’ve done for months is hope and grieve, hope and grieve. A vortex that’s taken them and smashed them on the rocks, over and over. And even before that, the fruitless eight months they spent trying before turning to IVF had already drained them of their will and good cheer.

“I feel fine,” he lies.

“Yeah? How’s —“ Zayn cuts himself off.

“I’m still pregnant,” Harry says. “I think.”

“Okay.”

“Still not showing,” he adds.

He’s never shown. He’s never gotten the chance. He’s lost every one of them before twelve weeks, and he’s too lanky. There was a time in August when every time he saw a visibly pregnant person, tears would spring immediately to his eyes.

He’s started to soften somewhat in the middle now, though. He tries to ignore it, in the shower and when he’s changing clothes. He doesn’t want to get attached to the concept.

“Okay,” Zayn says again. He sounds like a telephone operator.

He’s been hiding his emotions about all this for Harry’s sake. Harry only has scattered evidence of how he feels: Zayn lying next to him in bed crying after he thinks Harry has gone to sleep. The shards of an intentionally broken mug, carefully gathered and placed in a Whole Foods bag. A fist-sized hole in the sheetrock wall in a remote part of their basement.

This year’s Father’s Day had come a week after Harry’s second miscarriage, and Zayn left for a while to be with Louis and his kids. Harry went to the spa and got hot rock massages, shiatsu, acupuncture — any pain he could subject himself to under the guise of pampering. He came home to find Zayn had beaten him there and was dumping out every bottle of alcohol in the house so he wouldn’t drink. Harry helped him; he brought a box of limited-edition IPAs out onto the patio and beat the bottles into smithereens with a baseball bat, his scalp and fingertips tingling with grief and rage. When he was finished, he and Zayn lay down on the deck, laughing hysterically and comforting each other while the stink of expensive beer wafted up from the hot wood.

“We can visit Naomi day after you get back,” Zayn says. “Sharon texted me like an hour ago.”

“Don’t call her Naomi, I don’t want it to stick…”

“Little nameless daughter, then. The artist formerly known as Naomi.”

“I’m afraid to name her,” Harry admits.

Zayn takes a beat before responding, “I get it.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you too. I’m worried about you, babe.”

Harry laughs. “I’m fine,” he says, his voice so low it barely escapes his chest. “I mean, fine enough… look, I’ll be home soon. I just have a meeting tomorrow with Chris.”

“Right. Good luck with that.”

“Thanks.”

“Text me in the mornin’,” Zayn says.

“I will.”

They exchange I love yous and goodnights despite that it’s only late afternoon where Zayn is, and ring off.

Harry holds the off-white cord in his hands and stretches it between his fingers, marveling at it. How weird. He didn’t know they even still made these. It’s a funny antique, like a rotary.

He loops the cord around his neck without thinking about it. It snags his hair, which has gotten long again, lately. Down to his shoulders.

Harry pulls the cord tighter. He can barely feel the pressure. It’s more a mild discomfort, like wearing a choker. He thinks about how pulling a belt around his neck would feel, thinks about choking himself into unconsciousness — then lets out a laugh and undoes the cord.

He takes a seat on the bed and hits number one on the keypad.

“Front desk, what can I do for you, Mr Styles?” a dry-voiced elderly Englishman chirps in his ear.

He thinks, rather out of nowhere, of a time when he was very newly married to Angelos and they were traveling in Denmark. A porter he approached had bowed deeply to him and exclaimed with diffidence, “Prince Harry, it is an honor!” It was totally disorienting — he said aloud, “Oh no, please don’t _bow_ , mate, I just wanted directions to the toilet.”

“Could I get some room service, please?” he says.

“Yes sir, what would you like?”

“A hamburger with chips.”

“Fantastic. Any condiments on the hamburger?”

His brain moves sluggishly. What condiments exist in the world? It takes him a moment to remember. “Ketchup and mustard, please.”

“Excellent choice, Mr Styles. It will be up in ten minutes.”

“Thank you,” Harry murmurs, and sets the phone back on the hook.

 

LONDON, SEPTEMBER 26, 2027

His meeting is at a rooftop restaurant on the right-hand side of the Thames. The sky is threatening overhead, a rolling steely gray. It comforts him.

Chris is late, so Harry orders them some appetizers and sips his ice water. He’s recently laser whitened his teeth again, and the cold makes the nerves in them ache. He amuses himself by watching people on the river buses below. He could check his phone, but lately texting has become an enormous mental chore. The things people say to him don’t make as much as sense as they used to. _Would you like to get drinks Tuesday?_ What are drinks? What the fuck is a Tuesday?

Distantly, thunder rumbles, and the chilly wind picks up. The other diners around him begin to look nervous. Harry sort of hopes it does rain on them. He wants to be out in the rain.

Chris appears in his field of vision, hustling past the bouncers and coming over to him. He’s wearing a plain anorak and physically nondescript in the way directors generally are, but Harry can always recognize him by the little square, rimless glasses he wears.

“What an ugly-ass day this is,” he says as he sits down. “This is why I don’t like this country.”

Harry laughs at this. “Not charmed by our wonderful weather?”

“No, and not your wonderful food, either,” Chris says, scanning the menu.

“The cheese plate here is quite good, actually.”

“Would you share a flat of beers with me?”

Harry’s throat tightens. “No, sorry. Trying to cut out carbs.”

Chris glances up and studies him. “Yeah, that’s probably smart,” he says, then looks back at the menu.

Harry is far too numb to be bothered by this, but he understands that Chris is referring to the puffiness in his face. Sorry, he thinks, I’ve been pregnant for twenty-eight of the last thirty-five weeks, and shooting syringes full of hormones into my thigh near-daily, and I’m actually pregnant right now and just cried in a taxi a half hour ago, so I might not be at my tightest.

“The farro salad here is good,” Harry says.

Chris eyes the cheese plate. “You haven’t eaten any of this,” he says. “Something wrong with it?”

Harry clears his throat. “I was eating the fruit spread.”

He’d forgotten, when he ordered, that pregnant people aren’t allowed soft cheeses. Or rather, he hadn’t forgotten that — he’d forgotten he was pregnant in the first place.

A waiter comes over, then. He’s very good-looking. “Hello there. Are we our full party?”

“Yeah, this is it,” Chris says. “Is it gonna rain?”

“It might,” the waiter says. “We’ll put your umbrella up if it does.”

“Our umbrella,” Chris scoffs. “What is this, Palm Beach?”

“Would you prefer to be reseated inside, sir?”

Chris waves him off. “Nah. Bring me a Guinness, and bring us both a farro salad.”

The waiter nods.

“Thank you,” Harry says to him, handing his menu over.

Chris scoffs again when he’s gone. “You always undermine me with these people… _thank you-u-u_ …”

“Just being polite, man,” Harry says. “Wouldn’t kill you.”

Chris looks up at him over his glasses. “Alright,” he says, “down to business. I want you for this script I just optioned.”

“What’s the role?”

“It’s good for you,” he says. “You’d play American, but you've done that once before, right? It was a little sloppy, if I’m remembering right… we’ll hook you up with a dialect coach this time. The role’s a defense attorney who goes up against the mob.”

“Interesting,” Harry says.

“Yeah, it’s like _The Firm,_ ” Chris says. “You’d be Tom Cruise. You seen _The Firm_?”

“I haven’t.”

“You seen _Internal Affairs_?”

“That’s another no.”

“Fucking Brits, I swear. You seen _The Departed_?” Chris grins. “ _The Depaaahted_?”

“That I’ve seen, yeah.”

“There we go! Think Leo in that, but more posh and restrained. I am gonna need some of that good anger from you, though.”

Harry smiles humorlessly. “I’ve got anger,” he says.

Chris snaps his fingers. “ _The Conversation_ ,” he says. “Coppola. That’s what I’m going for. You seen that?”

Harry shakes his head.

“Christ,” Chris says in exasperation, but then his beer is delivered and he’s momentarily distracted. Harry picks at the cheese plate some more, taking the apricots. “So I wanted to start shooting this in the spring.”

Harry’s stomach swoops. “I can’t,” he says. “It’s gotta be later than that.”

Chris looks up from his phone. “Why? You have something else in the pipe?”

“I have some personal things going on. I had sort of planned to take a full year off.”

His eyes grow hard with annoyance. “Really?”

“Sorry. But yeah, really.”

“Next summer, then?”

“Late next summer, sure.”

“Christ, Styles!”

“We’re in the middle of adopting a baby,” Harry says, trying to placate him with a tidbit of incomplete information. “So we have to focus on that, and then it’s gonna disrupt things a bit, getting her settled in.”

“Isn’t that what you have a husband for?”

“Chris, I’m not arguing with you. Feel free to give the part to someone else. I’ll be ready when I’m ready.”

Chris looks deeply unhappy, but says nothing, which means he doesn’t want to give the part to anyone else. Harry has managed to make himself a muse of his, and will receive all the attendant privileges.

“Finish your beer,” Harry tells him.

 

*

 

Back at the hotel, he has some violent morning sickness into the toilet (goodbye, farro salad) and then retires to the bedroom to watch BBC News for a bit. He’s left the balcony door open; it’s raining in earnest now, the drops cracking hard off the stone and the sky as dark as a bruise. Cold, damp air gusts in, making gooseflesh rise on his arms.

Harry tires of the news quickly (it’s bad, always bad these days) and lies back against the beautiful scarlet sheets, starting to jerk himself off. He thinks of the waiter from lunch at first, because he was really quite handsome. He imagines the waiter playing with his cock and then his asshole, and then he imagines being fucked right there on the rooftop as the rain pounds their bare skin. The real-time sound and feel of it coming in the open door add to the verisimilitude of his fantasy.

Halfway through it turns — Zayn is fucking him now, not the waiter. Harry comes in his hand, feeling loneliness like a bag over his head, blinding and suffocating.

Tears leak from the corners of his eyes as he lies there. He fumbles on the bedside table for his phone.

Harry feels guilty, as the phone rings, that he’s only calling for reassurance and not to ask how Zayn is or anything. When he hears his voice, the tears only come more freely.

“Babe,” Zayn says, sounding worried. “You there?”

Harry lets out a gasping hiccup. “Sorry.”

“You okay?”

“I miss you.”

“Switch your flight,” Zayn says.

Harry inhales. “I was gonna pop by and see my mum tomorrow…”

“We can fly her out here anytime. Come home. You oughta be home right now.”

“Yeah…”

“I’m serious.” The clear, familiar sound of Zayn’s voice steadies him. “I don’t like not bein’ by your side.”

“I don’t like it either,” Harry murmurs.

“Come home, then.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“That I’ve needed you so much, lately...”

“Look,” Zayn sighs. “I’d do anything for you to feel better, you know that. I hate this. I hate what this’s done to you.”

Harry’s heart swells from a turgid mix of self-pity and powerful intimacy. He feels the thread connecting him and Zayn like it’s a physical force, a rope stretched between continents. “I’ll come home.”

“Good.”

 

LOS ANGELES, SEPTEMBER 27, 2027

He leaves the next morning. It’s still pouring down rain as he takes off. Harry watches London unfold underneath him like a road map, then picks up his phone and texts Nick.

_Sorry i missed you while i was in town, get you next time xx_

_It’s alright,_ Nick says. _You okay though?_

_Yeah why?_

_Just been so MIA lately_

_Im fine,_ Harry says. He hesitates, then adds, _We’re still having fertility issues_

 _Ahhhh that’s a pisser… i’m sorry mate_ , Nick says.

_Appreciate it x_

_I’m sure it’ll happen for you_ , he adds.

Everyone keeps saying that, and it’s the worst thing they could say. Harry doesn’t want a pep talk, he wants loving sympathy. Why is that so hard, he wonders. Why does hardly anyone have it in them?

He sends Nick a heart emoji, though. Wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings when he’s just trying to help.

 

*

 

Harry makes his way through LAX toward Zayn, who’s waiting outside his terminal in an idling car. It’s bad, today, as far as fans and paparazzi go. He’s been laying low for so long that it’s like they’re experiencing a physical hunger for him. His security buffers him, but hands reach out and grab at him as he goes by, and screams pierce his ears.

He keeps moving, though. Gliding. He woke up today feeling very philosophical about everything. He feels like he’s finally cleaved his emotions from the walls of his heart, and now they’re just floating free inside of him, less able to do damage.

Outside, Los Angeles is hazy and bright. Security take his bags from his shoulder and lead him to the idling Escalade, which gleams like onyx in the sun.

Harry gets in the backseat. As he suspected, there’s a driver up front. Zayn, across from him, opens his arms.

Harry moves towards him and collapses into them. His thin cotton shirt reeks of smoke — somehow this is very comforting. The car rolls into motion.

“Are the kids still over?” he murmurs.

Zayn strokes his hair. “No, love… it’s Monday… took ‘em back yesterday.”

“Oh, right,” Harry says. That makes him sort of sad. He wanted to see them.

Or at least he thinks he does — every time they’re over lately, he’s not nearly as good company as he wants to be, and watching Zayn parenting fills him with anguish. He continually apologizes to Zayn for being so distracted and unfunny, for not being _on_ , and Zayn gently tells him, ‘It’s okay, babe, this is what depression does to you,’ but he can’t wrap his brain around the idea. Depression? No, it has to be some kind of personal failing.

“You jet lagged?” Zayn says.

“Nah,” Harry says, “just time moves differently when you’re with the people I was with. They live in a different, um… timestream.”

He isn’t even sure what he means by this, but a nice thing about Zayn is that he never makes Harry explain himself when he’s talking nonsense.

Zayn kisses him. “Back to normal now.”

“Yeah.”

 

MALIBU, OCTOBER 7, 2027

Harry’s OB is matter-of-fact to a fault. Zayn doesn’t like him, but Harry loves him. He picked him after the second miscarriage, when he was weary of everyone in his previous doctor’s office smiling encouragingly at him like he was a puppy without any hind legs. Dr Oswald is a man of science with no bedside manner, who tells Harry exactly what he needs to know without embellishment or editorializing.

After the third miscarriage, Oswald had sat him down and said briskly, “You may want to consider giving up on IVF.”

“Oh,” Harry said.

“I don’t know if this is ever going to happen for you, with the state of the eggs you have left, and I have concerns about the impact this is having on your mental health.”

Harry began to hear a distant ringing in his ears. “Okay,” he said.

So they did. They gave up. They began the adoption process. But less than three months later, he was back in Oswald’s office, miraculously seven weeks pregnant. Oswald was fascinated in his usual dry way. “Was likely a combination of the Fertinex still in your system, and Zayn’s high sperm count,” he said.

Zayn didn’t appreciate this. He’s only wanted to think of the baby in miraculous terms, like it’s been granted to them by God after all their suffering.

Harry can’t think that way, because if they lose this baby, too, then God is just smashing his head off a concrete sidewalk and taunting him about how much it hurts.

He prefers Oswald’s interpretation.

 

*

 

He’ll be twelve weeks pregnant tomorrow.

He doesn’t really think about it as he goes about his business. It’s funny, because most of this year has been swallowed up by obsessing about that exact thing, and now as he’s approaching this safe harbor milestone, he’s thinking about anything and everything else. Practicing the guitar, taking up with a new yoga instructor, planning a winter holiday for him and Zayn.

They have an appointment with Dr Oswald on the sixth, and Harry goes down to their private stretch of the beach that morning. He just lies there and bakes in the sun for a while, trying to let his tight muscles relax.

He gets back ten minutes before they have to leave, sundazed and a bit pink in the cheeks. Zayn is on their expansive balcony that overlooks the ocean, talking angrily on the phone to someone. He’s having issues with his sixth album. It’s Harry’s fault, really — Zayn was supposed to be doing promo and filming videos all this summer, but he couldn’t leave his husband’s side, so they’ve had to delay the release by about six months.

Harry leans out the door, catches his eye and mimes tapping a watch.

“Right, I’ve got to go,” Zayn says into the phone. “Talk later.”

He hangs up without waiting for a response.

“Sorry,” Harry says. “Just — doctor.”

“Yeah, I know,” Zayn says. “Let’s go.”

 

*

 

First off, a nurse weighs him — Harry’s gained exactly two pounds — then extracts some blood and carries it off to who-knows-where for further study. Only after this drudgery does Oswald come in, smelling strongly of aftershave.

“How are you feeling?” he says.

Harry is at a loss. “Alright,” he responds in a rather English way.

“He’s been a little lethargic,” Zayn answers for him.

Harry turns and looks at him, crinkling the paper under his bum. Zayn shrugs. “You have.”

“That’s normal,” Oswald says, but he takes a moment to massage Harry’s lymph nodes. He always touches him with mercifully dispassionate hands, like he’s a chef deboning a chicken. “Any other symptoms?”

“Just nausea,” Harry says.

Oswald drops his hands and studies him. He’s tanned with a cut jaw like a lot of the older men out here, but there’s a kindness in his eyes that reminds Harry of a nice maths teacher he had as a boy.

“You look well,” he says. “Good color and everything. We’ll see how the bloodwork comes back, but let’s get into the ultrasound for now.”

Harry lies back in his chair, reaching out for Zayn, who takes his hand. This is always the worst part, waiting for the picture to come up, waiting to see if the baby is still there, if its heart is still thumping.

Zayn squeezes his hand; his watch rubs against Harry’s wrist. Harry focuses on that mild discomfort as he uses his other hand to lift up his shirt. He doesn’t look at the screen, not even now. Anxiety surges through him, dread sludging thickly through his veins.

Zayn runs his free hand up and down Harry’s tattooed forearm, stroking him. Harry looks at his face instead of the screen as Oswald rubs the gel on him.

Zayn gives him a smile, his eyes crinkling.

“Hi handsome,” Harry says.

“Hi love,” Zayn says.

“What d’you want for dinner?”

Zayn laughs. Harry loves his face when he laughs; he gazes at him hungrily, filling his eyes with him. “You wanna talk about that now?”

“Indulge me.”

“Alright,” Oswald says. “Harry, everything looks okay. Baby’s fine. You can look.”

Harry snaps his head back to the left; there it is, a ghostly silhouette on the soft black background.

“And I have a heartbeat,” Oswald says, clicking the volume up with a little remote so they can hear the _swoosh-swoosh_.

Harry lays his head back, exhaling quickly. He feels relief like it’s a hit of cocaine, softening his joints and parting his lips. If he does lose this baby, he resolves, he’s going to do some coke for old times’ sake, to celebrate the futility of human endeavor.

“Look at that,” Zayn murmurs. “Perfect little face… Harry, look, mate, look.”

“I’m afraid,” he says, his voice crackling, and he laughs.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” Oswald says. “Totally normal ultrasound.”

Harry allows himself another glance, then. He’s surprised by how much it affects him — his breath catches in his throat like a puff of cotton, and he squeezes Zayn tighter.

“It looks so big,” he says.

“About two inches, now,” Oswald says.

Harry glances over at him, dragging his eyes from the doppler. “Everything alright in there?”

Oswald nods slowly, his eyes moving as he studies the image. “Perfect,” he says. “No abnormalities to speak of.”

“But we can’t know for sure yet,” Harry says.

Oswald smiles at him. “Of course not. No one can know anything beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

This makes Harry want to scream. No, it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that no matter how hard he works, or how good he is, or how much he wants it, or how much money he throws at it, he can’t guarantee that this baby won’t die in him too. It seems insane. Do they understand how much he’s wanted this, and for how long? _Fix it,_ he wants to scream, and throw fistfuls of cash at Oswald, _fix it, fix it, fix it, what do you mean you can’t fucking fix it?_

Zayn presses his nose to Harry’s scalp and runs a hand roughly over his hair. He’s been doing that a lot, these last few months — shoving Harry back inside his body when he starts to leak out of it and float away.

 

*

 

They go visit the baby after.

“She’s fussy today,” Sharon warns them when she opens the door, then leaves it open for them to follow her into her oceanside studio apartment. It’s minimalist, with whitewashed walls and tall thin windows that pour in light like votives.

Harry was very pleased when he first visited. “Fantastic place for a baby,” he gushed, then despite this had absent-mindedly tried to take said baby with him when he left. Sharon had to gently peel her out of his arms in the doorway.

She hands the baby to Zayn, who coos to her as he brings her over to the sofa. “Are we fussy today?” he murmurs. “Are we?”

Harry heads into the kitchen and fights with a childproofed cabinet to fetch a vase. They always bring Sharon daffodils, because she said once that she likes them; her apartment is now scattered with vases full of daffodils in varying states of life.

Sharon sidles up next to him, rummaging around in the cabinets for a Keurig cup. “Oh, you don’t have to bring me those every time, sweetheart,” she says, laughing. “You guys are too much. You want a cup of coffee?”

“No thank you,” he says. She still doesn’t know he’s pregnant. No one involved in the adoption does. He’s afraid if he miscarries again, they’ll try to paint him as being too emotionally unstable to take on the care of a baby.

Once he’s arranged the daffodils nicely, he leaves her to the coffee preparations and climbs the short staircase up into the sitting room area. Zayn is sat with the baby under a softly spinning balsa wood ceiling fan, standing her up on his lap and making faces at her.

Harry settles next to him, and Zayn says, “What’s the name of that fireman, the one who found her, like?”

“Oh,” Harry says, shifting on the couch. “Tony, I think.”

“That’s what I thought. What d’you think about Tony for her?”

“Bloke’s name, isn’t it?”

“With an I, though, y’know what I mean? Like Childs, or Morrison.”

“Toni,” Harry murmurs. “Are you a Toni?”

She looks at him with her sparrow-bright eyes. He always has this strange feeling she understands what he’s saying.

Sharon climbs up after them and sits on the couch across from them, setting Zayn’s coffee on the table and sipping her own.

“Sharon,” Zayn says, “you haven’t got any interest in keepin’ ‘er, do you?”

She shakes her head. “No, no. She’s a darling, but I’m strictly a foster mom, been doing it for a while now. I have grown kids of my own, I just do this to help out.”

Harry finds he’s very relieved to hear this, even though she’s heretofore never expressed interest in adopting Toni/Naomi.

“I can’t see anything getting in the way of you guys taking her,” she adds. “The home study is going well, right?”

“Seems like it,” Zayn says. “Reckon they like that I’m sober… bein’ rich can’t hurt, either.”

Harry reaches out and runs his knuckle over Toni’s little cheek. She makes a soft sound, and Zayn hands her to Harry; he clutches her to his chest, kissing her on her wee downy head. She fists her little fingers in his shirt and fusses softly.

“As far as my experience of this stuff goes, I think you should have her by the beginning of next year,” Sharon says.

This sounds like an eternity to Harry. He knows this all has to go this way, he knows they have to be checked and vetted, he knows Sharon has been trained to foster and they haven’t, all that. But this baby is theirs, he’s known she’s theirs since he first saw her, and every time he has to leave here without her in his arms he itches like he’s got scabies on his insides.

They’ve done their absolute best. They even got married so it would be easier to adopt her, which isn’t particularly romantic, but there isn’t much romance about a second marriage, anyway. Harry knows they’re the loves of each other’s lives, he doesn’t have to say it in front of a crowd or on Instagram. It was nice, though — a pretty August ceremony in rural England with just their family and closest friends. Zayn’s littlest sister caught the bouquet, which was funny for how much it stressed Zayn out. “Redo,” he said, “can we get a fucking redo on that?” and everyone laughed.

There were lots of flowers, bushels of them. That’s what Harry remembers most, when he thinks about it or looks at his ring. All the beautiful lavender and lilac.

 

*

 

Not long after they get home, Zayn leaves Harry to go fetch his kids from school. Harry’s curled up on the couch in the sitting room, watching nothing in particular on TV — swapping between a marathon of Barefoot Contessa reruns and a Liverpool game.

“You feel alright?” Zayn says to him. “Nauseous?”

Harry shakes his head.

“Hungry?”

“I’ll eat at dinner.”

With one knee, Zayn kneels on the couch beside him and presses a hand to his middle. Harry lays his own hand over Zayn’s.

“There’s nothing to feel,” he says.

“Little softer,” Zayn says. “You ‘ad pretty hard abs.”

This is true, he supposes. After they gave up on IVF, he started working out like a fiend again.

“We shouldn’t have named her,” Harry mutters.

Zayn runs his fingers up and down Harry’s tummy. “Who?”

“Toni… we shouldn’t’ve…”

“C’mon, she ought to have a name we picked for her, she’s our baby.”

“Not yet.”

“Close enough.”

“Zayn,” Harry says in a warning voice, looking up at him. “You need to cut that shit out.”

Zayn’s eyes grow flinty. “What? Hope?”

“Yeah. Hope.”

“Nobody can live without hope, bruv.”

“I can,” Harry says. “I killed mine.”

Cleaned himself raw like cutting up a cantaloupe. Scraped the orange, meaty flesh from his insides until he was nothing but a shell. Sure, he still cries and has pangs and gets relieved at ultrasounds, but that’s vestigial, like when they chop off your arm and you think you can feel your fingers aching.

But Zayn says, “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you want.”

Harry removes Zayn’s hand from his stomach, so he doesn’t get used to the comforting feel of it there. Zayn sighs and kisses him on the head, then goes to fetch his children.

 

*

 

It’s getting dark out by the time they go out to the patio for dinner, so Harry brings out a couple candles along, three of them clutched between his fingers in one rangy hand and a candelabra in the other.

“You and your atmosphere,” Zayn says fondly as he leans over Mia to set them up in the center of the table.

“Nothing wrong with a bit of atmosphere… Lighter?”

Zayn digs in his pocket for one and hands it over.

“You should quit smoking, Dad,” Mia pipes up.

“I’m trying,” Zayn mutters.

“You know,” Harry says to the kids as he lights the candles, “I still have a scar on my hand from where your dad burned me with a cig.”

Amir and Mia look duly shocked.

“Accidentally,” he rushes to add.

“Haz,” Zayn complains.

Harry settles into his seat. “Well, you _did_ ,” he says with a chuckle, digging into his salad. “We were very drunk, he leaned over, and…” He shows his wrist to the kids, pointing at a small crescent-shaped scar. “Took us both a sec to realize, and then the damage was done.”

This was back when they were dating for the first time, but Harry won’t divulge that to them. No need to make the timeline of the band’s romantic history with each other any more complicated in their little heads.

“Complete accident,” Zayn says. “Felt like shit about it.”

“Wow,” Mia says. “Did it hurt?”

“Stung,” Harry says. “I can’t recommend it. Keep your little hands away from cigarettes, in all senses.”

“I can’t believe Dad ever got drunk,” Amir says. “He doesn’t even toast at weddings.”

“Your dad got up to a lot of nonsense as a teenager,” Harry says, glancing over at Zayn, whose handsome face is lit warmly by the candles.

Zayn laughs. “So did you!”

“I admit it, yeah.”

“Wait, Dad, when was I born?” Mia says. “Were you a teenager then?”

Zayn huffs out an awkward laugh. “No, love, me and Louis managed to beat teen pregnancy.”

“When, then?” Mia says. Amir glances up from his food, like he’s curious too.

“Um,” Zayn says. “When you were born… you were born right before my birthday, actually, so I was, ahh… twenty-two.”

“What about me?” Amir says.

“Shit…” Zayn squints at the table, like he’s counting in his head. “Just turned twenty-four, I think.”

Mia studies him. “Is that young?”

“It ain’t old,” Zayn says. He flicks his sleepy dark eyes over at Harry, who had zoned out looking at him.

“When do you adopt the baby?” Amir says.

He doesn’t sound thrilled by the prospect; his tone is more ‘when do I have to go to the dentist next?’ than ‘I’m excited to have a new sister’. Harry wonders how he’d feel about the pregnancy.

“That’s a few months off, yet,” Zayn says.

Under the table, Amir scuffs his shoes on the stone patio, then stabs his fork into a piece of chicken.

“I want to meet her,” Mia says. “We need to work out if she’s good or not.”

“Yeah,” Amir says.

“She’s just a baby, still,” Zayn says, looking amused. “But me and Harry quite like her. ‘Spect you will too.”

 

*

 

Amir’s bedtime is a half hour before Mia’s, something he now protests every single night (probably as a proxy for the larger power struggle he’s in with Zayn, Harry guesses, but he doesn’t want to voice this suspicion in case Zayn doesn’t agree). Zayn manages to shuttle him off to bed, though, leaving Mia and Harry behind in the cozy room to watch the evening news.

“Will you go with me to the beach tomorrow?” Mia says, without looking up from her phone. “I wanna go for a swim before the water gets too cold.”

“Sure,” Harry says.

“Cool.” She sets her phone down then, and turns to him, smiling. “Hey, I have a joke for you. It’s a joke for British people.”

He smiles back. “Go for it.”

“Okay. Um. A waiter comes up to a guy, and he’s like, do you like your food? And the guy says — wait, shit. No, the guy asks the waiter what the food is. The waiter’s British, right? Or the guy is British? Maybe they’re both British. Anyway, the waiter says, it’s bean soup. And the guy says, I don’t care what it’s _been_ , I want to know what it is!”

She spreads her arms as if to put a flourish on the punchline, and Harry chuckles. “That’s a good one.”

Mia looks deflated, though. “I thought that would cheer you up more,” she says.

This pierces his heart. “It did,” he says. “I promise.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why are you and my dad so sad lately?” Her eyes search his. “Are you already getting a divorce?”

“No, no.”

“Are you _sure_?”

“Yes, love, I’m absolutely sure.”

“Then what?”

“We’ll be okay,” Harry says. “I promise. Adopting a baby is just hard. You want to take them home really badly, but first you’ve got to go through a lot to prove you’re up to it.”

“Why do you have to adopt one?” Mia says. “Can you guys not have one on your own?”

It takes him a while to formulate an appropriate response to this. It feels like his thoughts are traveling from the end of a long hallway. How much do you tell an eleven-year-old, even a precocious one?

“We might not,” Harry says. “We don’t know yet. We’re adopting in the meantime. We both wanted to do that. It’s not any less of a commitment, she isn’t going to be any less our child.”

“Right,” Mia says, looking somewhat abashed. “I know. My dad told me. He told me I should be sensitive with you guys about it, and not just say whatever pops in my head like normal. But I guess I already messed that up.”

“You’re doing fine. It’s your family, too, you’ve a right to ask questions.”

“It just bums me out when you’re sad,” she says. “And Amir’s pissed at our dad ‘cos we didn’t see him all summer, and our other dad is so busy with the twins, and he’s stressed out all the time. So’s Liam. And my best friend Tasha’s parents are getting divorced now, too. Like, nobody’s happy anymore, and I want to fix it.”

“It’s not your job to fix it,” Harry says to her gently. “We’ll all be alright in the end.”

Mia pulls hard at the fringe on the couch pillow behind her, like she’s taking out her frustration on it. “I guess.”

 

MALIBU, NOVEMBER 4, 2027

Harry wakes a while before Zayn does. He’s pulled out of sleep at eight a.m. by his phone rattling across the metallic silver surface of the bedside table. It’s texts from his team about this Gucci editorial he’s meant to do, which has been endlessly postponed by the whims of the photographer, who ran off to holiday in Amsterdam and has subsequently been fired and replaced with a woman.

 _Women are more professional,_ one of Harry’s handlers says in the group text.

He tends to agree.

Someone has to tell them that he is (improbably, astonishingly) almost four months pregnant, and while not super obviously so, he does have a bump that’s making the line of his body change and his trousers fit differently. But Harry doesn’t want to be the one to have to tell them. He sort of wants to float blithely into the shoot, and then when they disrobe him and see his little secret, say, “Oh, haven’t you heard?”

Gucci would immediately fire him for this nondisclosure, he assumes. He wouldn’t mind.

Since his first pregnancy ended (six weeks in, complete, no D&C, no autopsy) he hasn’t let himself imagine what it would be like to be very far along. So each time he realizes he’s actually gotten rounder feels like a gift. A few days ago, he stood admiring himself in the mirror, turning from side to side — when Zayn walked in, Harry said softly, “I think we’re having a baby.”

It was a moment of awakening for him, a rebirth, an emergence from his chrysalis and a spreading of damp wings.

Zayn had wrapped his arms around him and pressed a kiss to his shoulder, murmuring, “Yeah, we’ve been for a bit now.”

When Zayn finally wakes, yawning and stretching his tattooed limbs out against the silky sheets, Harry sets his phone aside.

“Hey love,” Zayn says sleepily.

“Morning…”

“How you feeling?”

“Really good, actually.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Harry rolls over and presses a kiss to the warm dip between Zayn’s collarbones. Zayn wraps his arms around him, kissing his head.

“I like when you make me feel dainty,” Harry murmurs.

Zayn laughs. “Want me to start wearing lifts to functions?”

“Noo, it’s not a height thing, more a mannerisms thing...”

Zayn kisses him again. “Okay, princess.”

A warm smile cracks Harry’s face.

“How’s baby?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says. “I still haven’t felt it move yet. I feel like everything’s still alright, though.”

Zayn rolls him over onto his back and settles his hand on Harry’s middle, then kisses it, right under the butterfly tattoo. Harry beams up at him; Zayn smiles back.

“I like seein’ you happy,” Zayn says. “Been a while.”

“Has it?”

“Yeah.”

Harry laces his hand in Zayn’s and plays with one of his rings. “I was thinking I could go pick your kids up today,” he says, “and let Louis know about the baby.”

Zayn arches his brows. “I could do that, love.”

“No, I’d like to tell him. He’s actually been good to me about this whole thing, I’d like to, y’know… be the one let him know we finally got it, we’re sort of in the clear.” He shrugs. “Open a bottle of sparkling water.”

Zayn laughs. “Okay.”

Louis was one of the only people who never tried to buck him up with an ‘I’m sure it’ll happen for you’ or any other heart-rending little platitudes that preyed on his wounded hope to make the platitude-giver feel better about the awkward topic of miscarriage. All Louis ever said was “I’m so sorry, mate, that’s absolutely horrible,” which was what he really wanted to hear.

“D’you reckon it’s safe for me to travel next month?” Harry says.

Zayn kisses him on the tummy again. “Didn’t your doctor clear you?”

“Yeah… just wondering what you thought… if you don’t think we should go, we shouldn’t.”

“Honestly, I think it’d be good for you to get away, go be somewhere warm for a bit.”

Harry chuckles. “We live in Los Angeles…”

“Yeah, but the smog, like. And the traffic. And the work stress. Let’s go lay on the beach, I’ll feed you pineapple.”

“That sounds nice…”

Zayn leans down and presses kisses to his jaw and the corners of his lips. “It does.”

Harry reaches up and runs his fingers through Zayn’s sleek hair, mussing it.

“I have to tell Gucci I’m pregnant,” he murmurs. “They’re gonna be mad.”

“Fuck Gucci,” Zayn says, and sucks at his upper lip, making him shiver from tingles. “Fuck ‘em. They can all die.”

Harry laughs. “I don’t want them to all _die_!”

“I do, if they’re stressing you out.”

“People just have expectations for me...”

“Fuck that.”

Harry grins. He does get a little thrill out of the angry hedonism Zayn employs on his behalf. “Yeah, fuck that. Let’s run away.”

“Love to,” Zayn says huskily, and nips at his ear.

“We have to come back though, for Toni.”

“We’ll come back, grab her, then run away again.”

“What about your other kids?”

“We’ll steal them too.”

He chuckles. “I don’t think Louis is gonna appreciate that.”

“He’ll get over it,” Zayn says. “‘E’s got like ten other kids.”

“Aw, c’mon.”

“You know I’m joking, loves.”

Harry kisses him on the nose. “I do.”

 

*

 

Louis takes an eternity to come to the door, making Harry wait on the porch like a mailman. Louis is continually “forgetting” to call out a tech from the company that made their security system and have them take Harry’s biometrics, so he can let himself in when he comes to get the kids. Every time Harry patiently says, “Why don’t you give me a key in the meantime?” Louis says, “Oh yeah, let’s just do that!” and then becomes mystically sidetracked and doesn’t do that, either. Harry still knows him well enough to know this is passive-aggressive territoriality in action, but no longer well enough to tell if it’s subliminal or outright.

It’s fine, though. If he were in the same situation, if Zayn were his ex and these were their kids, he’d probably do something similar. They’re both petty people, really — Harry just fancies himself a more sophisticated brand of petty than Louis.

Louis finally gets the door and waves him in wordlessly. Harry follows him in.

“Sorry for the wait,” Louis says, turning to him in the foyer. “Having a shit of an afternoon. You want something to drink? I’m gonna kill Liam.”

It takes Harry a second to work out that these two sentences have nothing to do with each other. “No thanks,” he says, and then remembers he’s pregnant. “Well, maybe a water? Why are you killing Liam?”

Louis starts leading him into the kitchen. “Toddlers,” he says. “Nightmares today, I only just got them down for a nap. And I just sent the nanny on holiday, fucking moron that I am. I should pay her a million dollars a year and never let her leave the city. She’s the first one the kids actually listen to, we’ve gone through like five this year alone. And I’m killing Liam ‘cos he was supposed to be home ages ago to relieve me.”

They enter the high-ceilinged kitchen, and Harry takes a seat at the island. Louis opens the fridge, then turns back to him in confusion. “You said water?”

“Yeah.”

Louis tosses him a Fiji. Harry catches it ably.

“Kids aren’t quite back from school,” Louis says. “Bus usually gets in at three-thirty.”

“I know,” Harry says. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Louis looks surprised. “Want to go in the den, then?” he says, and turns back to the fridge, pouring himself a glass of cold brew out of a pitcher. “And how serious is it? ‘Cos I’ve got oatmeal for brains today.”

“Not serious,” Harry says. “Just news.”

“ _Neeeews_ ,” Louis intones, in an imitation of his voice. “Alright. Lead on.”

He must have just been in the den, because the TV is on a Liverpool game and there’s some Louis-ish detritus on the couch — a tablet that’s open to Twitter, and a few biscotti wrappers on the couch. Louis picks all of this up, opens the lid of the Eames ottoman and tosses it inside.

Harry laughs at this.

“Don’t judge me,” Louis says, laughing too. He settles onto the couch, then, and looks up expectantly. Harry notices for the first time how dark the circles under his eyes are, and the few days worth of stubble growing in around the outlines of his beard.

Harry sits down next to him. He finds he’s nervous, suddenly. With a ginger movement, he adjusts the hoodie he has on, so his secret is kept right up until he reveals it.

“Right, so, my news,” he says.

Louis nods and takes a sip of his coffee.

“It’s sort of a surprise,” Harry says, somewhat fumblingly. “I mean, I was surprised.”

“Yeah?”

Harry’s heart begins pounding. He looks down at his fingers and picks off a fleck of old polish that’s lingered on his thumb.

“I’m actually pregnant,” he says, and looks up.

Louis appears to be as taken aback as Harry was expecting him to be. “What, you’ve got a baby in?”

“Bun in my oven, yeah.”

Louis’ gaze follows his hand. “For real?”

“Yeah!”

“I thought you decided to quit trying?”

“We did… this just, ah, happened. Wasn’t IVF or anything. I mean, we haven’t been, like. Using protection. But, y’know, we didn’t think it’d happen naturally…”

“Right, right…” Louis studies his face, looking apprehensive, like he isn’t sure how he should react. “How far along?”

Harry smiles. “Actually sort of a ways,” he says. “About four months now.”

Louis’ mouth falls open. “Oi, no shit?”

“No shit.”

“Everything’s okay, then?”

“Everything seems fine so far, yeah.”

“Four months… that’s so far in, mate!” He laughs. “Fuck you, you don’t look it at all, you giraffe!”

“Hey, I’ve got a little bump here!”

“Yeah? Can I feel?”

Harry takes his hand and guides it, cupping it gently to the subtle swell beneath his clothes.

Louis’ face changes: he gets a sort of bittersweet, nostalgic look, like he’s standing on a dock and watching someone he loves sail away to a better life.

Harry knows that look, because he’s felt the same thing, back when he was on the opposite end of this. Back in September 2016, after the tour had fallen apart and a knocked-up Louis had moved in with Zayn, and Harry’s disbelief had faded to leave a numb, restless ache in its place. He fled the country while he still could, before his new work obligations had a chance to swallow him. He flew to the French Riviera with Gemma and laid on the beach like a dead slug.

He drank too many slushy vodka drinks their first night there, and the words began to pour out of him — “I can’t believe Zayn’s having a baby, and it’s not with me,” he kept slurring to her, “I still can’t fucking believe this,” on and on in that vein until Gemma put a cool washcloth on his forehead and he dozed off in the airy darkness of their hotel room.

Louis starts to smile as he presses his hands to the baby bump. When he makes eye contact with Harry, he’s still smiling.

“Yeah, I feel it,” he says.

Harry smiles back.

“I’m really, properly happy for you,” he says, taking his hand back. “Honestly. I know how miserable this whole thing’s been.”

“Yeah,” Harry says. The air goes out of his lungs as he says it, and suddenly talking is difficult. He sniffs delicately. “Sorry… hormonal, lately.”

Louis laughs. “That’s just how it goes, mate, don’t apologize for it. You know, I was wondering why Zayn’s been more cheerful lately. And ‘e was all winky winky about somethin’ last week.”

“Yeah,” Harry says. He settles his hands against his middle, an indulgence he normally only allows himself in private. “This’d be it.”

Louis’ eyes twinkle. “D’you know what it is yet? Sex, I mean?”

“Not yet,” Harry says.

“Know what you want?”

“Oh, no idea… Be nice if it was a boy, I suppose, since we’re adopting a girl… but I think two girls would be nice, too.”

“You’re still going through with the adoption, then?”

“‘Course we are. She wasn’t like, a stopgap.”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” Louis hurries to say. “Just, two babies at once, it’s a lot… and you’ve been, y’know.”

Harry gives him a dry little smile. “A hysterical mess?”

“Been —“ Louis breaks off and laughs. “I was gonna say you’ve both been under a lot of stress.”

“Probably me more than him,” Harry says with an edge in his voice. If he’s going to suffer the humiliation of people walking on eggshells around him, they might as well be honest about how the shells came to be under their feet.

Louis exhales, then seems to take great care to form and polish what he says next. “It’s, um, understandable,” he says, “that you haven’t been at your best. And I reckon you’re too hard on yourself in general.”

“My therapist says the same thing,” Harry says.

Louis grins slyly. “Aye, so fire her and just come have coffee with me once in a while, I’ll straighten you out.”

“It’s a him,” Harry corrects.

“Oh, how sexist of me.”

“Is it?”

“I dunno,” Louis says. “Just always think of therapists as women.”

There’s a noise at the door, and then one of the twins comes wandering in, beelining for Louis and climbing up onto the couch beside him.

“Hi there, lovey,” Louis says. “Escaped your crib, have you?”

Harry gives the twin a cursory look. Must be Patrick. Two dark eyes, instead of Max’s cool mismatched ones.

Patrick doesn’t reply, just settles into Louis’ lap with comfortable possessiveness. He squints up at Harry, his brow furrowed. His eyebrows are much darker than his hair, which is still towhead blond. That and his cuteness make him look more innocent than he actually is — the main personality traits he seems to be displaying so far are “dominant over Max” and “sometimes bites.”

“Hullo,” Harry says to him.

“Hi,” Patrick repeats, and waves.

Louis tickles him on the stomach a little, and Patrick giggles. “Is your brother still asleep?”

He shrugs.

“Is that a yes or no? ‘Cos I can’t ‘ave you two just wandering the house.”

Patrick tugs at Louis’ shirtsleeve instead of answering. Louis’ phone chimes, and a few moments later, they hear Liam shouting hello.

Patrick bolts off of Louis’ lap and dashes out the door.

“Thank _God_ ,” Louis says with vigor.

There’s some muffled discussion between Liam and Patrick in the hall, and then feet on the staircase.

“So you’re due when, then?” Louis says to Harry.

Harry is unjustifiably surprised by the question. “Oh,” he says, “April.”

“Yeah? Funny, that’s when the twins were born.”

“Right, right... Yeah, April, but I forget the day.”

“Usually ain’t right, anyway,” Louis says.

“Was it ever right for you?”

He shakes his head. “I was early, late, then a bit premature.”

“Well, twins are different.”

“Ohh yeah,” Louis says, chuckling. “In all the least fun ways. I love them to death, mind, but days like today… that’s why I said what I did, about two at once.”

“You had Amir and Mia close together, though.”

“Harold, trust me, fifteen months is like ten years in toddler time.”

Harry, unappreciative of his uppish tone, does the math in his head. “They’ll be nine months apart, at least,” he says, and gestures lazily at his stomach. “Toni and um… whoever this is here.”

“Oh, that’s better, definitely,” Louis says. “Still, you’ll have my kids two or three days of the week, too. That’s a lot of parenting to suddenly be doing.”

“Yeah,” Harry says, rubbing at his temple. He’s growing lightheaded from the realities Louis is hammering into his head like an unpleasant little carpenter. His stomach lurches when he thinks of how difficult and defiant Amir has been lately. “Well, we’ll, um… get nannies.”

Louis laughs. “Yeah, God bless nannies. So, like, how are you, though? How’s it been so far?”

Harry fiddles with his rings. “I’m feeling good. Not nauseous anymore.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I haven’t had much in the way of symptoms… got a lot of energy, still.”

Louis smiles. “Of course you do, Harold.”

Harry laughs. “I actually feel nice. Sort of powerful... earthy. Womb-y.”

”Womb-y,” Louis repeats, with a hint of disbelief. 

“You never felt womb-y?”

”Ah, womb-y as in aware that somethin’ was in me womb, yes.”

Harry flaps his hand at him. “Anyway, it’s just cool right now… like, my body changing.”

“Wild, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“It’s never gonna go totally back to normal, you realize.”

“I don’t want it to,” Harry says.

A silence falls.

“I just realized,” Louis says, breaking it. “You and me, we really are gonna have kids that’re siblings… like, by blood.”

Harry thinks of a time sixteen years ago, when they pinky promised each other that if either of them ever got pregnant, the other would do it at the same time so they could go through it together. The memory comes back to him slowly, as if it has to travel a great physical distance.

When he first started trying with Zayn, he had told Louis — warned him, more like. Louis smiled and said he was really happy for them, but it rang a bit hollow, all things considered.

He softened, though, when they started having fertility issues; that’s when he became very genuinely supportive and kind about the whole thing. Louis is better equipped to love people in their struggles than in their triumphs, especially when those people are Harry.

“Yeah, crazy to think,” Harry says.

They hear someone in the hall, then, and Liam comes into the den with a sheepish look on his face.

“Hi angel,” he says to Louis.

“You are _two_ hours late, motherfucker,” Louis snaps at him, all the tenderness he was directing toward Harry gone in a flash.

Liam puts his hands up. “Who’s a motherfucker?” he exclaims.

“The two hours late motherfucker that I’m lookin’ at right now!”

“Look, I’m sorry. I kept trying to get out, but Zedd paid for the extra studio time, and he’d already been in there for twenty-four hours, he’s lost the plot, he wouldn’t let me leave —“

“Oh my _God_ ,” Louis says, mock-concerned, “put a gun to your head, did he? What’d you do with the kid?”

“Stuck him and Max in the playpen,” Liam says, still hovering without sitting, like he’s afraid of going too near to Louis. He’s just as red-eyed and stubbly, Harry notices.

“They’re gonna kill each other, Payno! They’ve been trying to kill each other all day! Why don’t you read my fuckin’ texts!”

“I do read your texts!”

“When you’re at work you don’t, you read the first line and then assume you know the rest of what I said!”

“Well,” Liam says wildly, “if they want to get after each other so badly, maybe we ought to just let ‘em duke it out!”

“D’you even hear yourself, lad?”

“No,” Liam says. “We got two hours of sleep in the last two days, so no, I literally don’t know what I’m saying. Hi Harry,” he says, finally turning to him.

Harry waves. “Hi. Here to take two kids off your hands.”

Liam sighs with relief. “Bless you.”

“He has some good news, too,” Louis says, glancing sidelong at Harry.

“I do,” he says. It feels easier to say, now that he’s told Louis. “I’m, um, actually pregnant. About four months pregnant.”

Liam looks joyfully shocked. “What! Wait, really? Shit, mate! I thought it wasn’t gonna happen?”

Harry shrugs. “It’s a miracle,” he says dryly, only half-facetious. “Took us by surprise. Sorry I didn’t say anything before now… we just wanted to be sure first.”

“No, no, that’s fantastic,” Liam says. “I’m so happy for you guys. We ought to open some sparkling water or something.”

Harry laughs. “I actually said that to Zayn this morning,” he says.

“Ayyy, great minds think alike.”

Liam goes over to Louis, then, in what seems like an attempt at a detente. He presses a kiss to Louis’ cheek, and Louis snorts, half-heartedly palming at his chest.

“Hey, I’ve never heard you call me motherfucker in a _mean_ way, before,” Liam murmurs to him. “Only a fun way.”

“First time for everything,” Louis says, nudging him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it. I know you don’t fuck your mother.”

Liam laughs and kisses him again, then gives him a pinch on his arse. They’re always the same, the two of them.

“I have to say, you’re really making me excited about the parenting adventure ahead,” Harry jokes.

Liam grins. “Terrible twos are temporary, I promise.”

 

*

 

Harry and Liam retire to the kitchen to crack open a bottle of San Pellegrino, while Louis heads upstairs to ensure that the twins haven’t actually murdered each other.

Liam clinks his champagne glass against Harry’s. Foam bubbles over the side of it and over the back of his tattooed hand; he licks it off with the nonchalance of the very sleep-deprived. “I think Lou’s a bit burned out on, y’know.” He drops his voice. “P-a-r-e-n-t-i-n-g.”

“Why’re you spelling it?” Harry says in amusement.

Liam laughs. “I dunno, I’ve got so used to spelling stuff in front of the twins. Hey, ignore me and him, though, don’t let us shit on your parade or anything. It’s just been one of those difficult days.”

“You aren’t,” he assures him. “What I said before, that was just banter.”

“Nah, I know, I know. I just want you to know we really are thrilled for you, man. I was so sad for you that you — y’know. Everything that was going on with all that,” he hedges in that diplomatic way of his, getting absolutely nowhere near the word miscarriage. “You look so much happier to me, now that I’m like, actually clued in. You haven’t much been yourself lately.”

“I haven’t, no,” Harry agrees.

“This is lovely, really.”

“Thanks, mate. Me and Zayn’ve been trying to, like, rein in the excitement. But I think I’m decently in the clear now… which is sort of surreal.”

“I can imagine,” Liam says.

“Almost feels like, I dunno… like I woke up from a nightmare, and suddenly I was four months pregnant.”

“Right, yeah.”

“It’s good, though,” Harry says. He sips his mineral water. “Good surreal.”

“You know, you always land on your feet,” Liam says.

“Do I?”

“Never known you to not get what you wanted in the end,” Liam says. “Even when you had to suffer to get there.”

“Same to you,” Harry tells him coyly.

They’ve never really talked about it, how they both got what they had bitched about wanting, in that hotel room in New York all those years ago. That Zayn and Louis had imploded on themselves and spun off like separate asteroids, landing back with each of them.

In his sillier, more Nicksian moments, Harry wonders if they cast some kind of curse on Zayn and Louis that day, and sealed it with a kiss. This is just silliness, though. There couldn’t be a relationship more overburdened by resentment and pressure at its outset; he’s amazed they even made it the five years they did.

Liam seems as though he’s about to respond, but Louis walks in at that moment, like Harry summoned him by thinking uncharitably. He has a sleepy, fussy Max on his hip — Max has his little hands fisted in Louis’ shirt and a dummy in his mouth.

“Hey,” Louis whispers. “They fell back asleep, actually, right there in the playpen, but this one woke up when I came in, wouldn’t leave me be.”

Liam pours him his own glass. “We’re toasting,” he says. “To the baby.”

Louis shuffles Max and clinks his glass off theirs. He looks like he wishes there was alcohol in it as he downs it. “To the baby,” he echoes.

Liam sets his own down, then, extends his hands to Harry and lifts an eyebrow. Harry nods, and Liam presses his hands gently to Harry’s middle.

“Wow,” he says. “Firm.”

“That’s my abs, sorry,” Harry says. He’s so used to tensing up when anyone touches his stomach. He relaxes his muscles as much as possible. “ _That’s_ baby.”

Liam beams at him. “Baby!”

Max lets out a huffy noise of complaint.

“Shh,” Louis says to Liam, stroking Max’s hair. “Payno, I’m telling you right now, if he doesn’t get a full nap in this afternoon, I’m gonna lose my mind.”

“Baby,” Liam whispers.

“Thanks.”

Louis’ phone chimes again, three times in a row, indicating that all three other kids have just arrived home.

“HEY,” Mia bellows from the foyer. “Where’s everybody! I need to tell you this crazy thing that happened in my last class! Dad?”

Liam rushes out into the hall, frantically shushing her.

“She’s all yours, that one,” Louis jokes.

Harry laughs.

 

THE MALDIVES, DECEMBER 10, 2027

When Zayn wakes up, Harry’s not in bed. The door to their beachside cabin is open, and the gauzy curtain is blowing in the breeze. All he sees is a stretch of white sand leading to the water, which ripples like blown glass under the bright sun.

“Haz,” he calls out.

No answer. The curtain keeps blowing. Zayn tries not to let anxiety leap up in his chest; Harry likes to wander.

“Harry?” he says, more loudly.

There’s footsteps on the porch, then Harry appears in the doorway, a glowing vision. He cut his hair a few weeks ago, but it’s still tousleably long, curling in the humidity — he’s weaved a few red flowers into it. He’s got a dark pendant around his neck, black swim trunks on under a floral patterned sarong; the round swell of his tummy peeks out over the waistband. He looks like a fertility goddess and a fratty PacSun advertisement at the same time.

“Come back here,” Zayn instructs. “Don’t just stand there all fuckable.”

Harry grins widely and pads across the wood floor to him. He’s got more of the red flowers in his hands; he stops beside the bed in the corner of the room and tosses red petals on Zayn like he’s making it rain before kneeling down on the mattress to press a kiss to his lips. His mouth is soft, and he tastes like sunblock and salt.

“Were you worried about me?” Harry teases in a husky voice, nuzzling their noses together.

“Always,” Zayn whispers back.

Harry bites at his bottom lip. “Then get out of bed, lazy-arse, and let’s go exploring.”

“Sex first...”

His eyes sparkle. “Yeah?” He runs his hand up Zayn’s leg, then smooths it into the V of his crotch, brushing against Zayn’s sensitive morning wood.

Zayn pulls him down into the sheets, and they snog passionately for a while, their teeth clicking. He runs his fingers through Harry’s saltwater-stiff hair, freeing the red flowers, letting them fall against the white bed.

Harry gazes up at him when he pulls back for a breath. “I feel baby,” he says.

“Yeah?” Zayn rests his hand on the tanned curve of Harry’s belly.

“Yeah, she’s fluttering… little fish…”

Zayn chuckles and strokes him with his thumb. “Our little princess… little fish princess.”

Harry laughs too, in an easy, airy way. Zayn hasn’t heard him laugh like that in ages.

He was so thrilled when they found out the baby was a girl, it actually managed to cut through his self-imposed shroud of secrecy. He got his mum and his sister on FaceTime as soon as they were in the car on the way home from the doctor’s. “It’s a girl!” he shouted at them, and they shouted back in elation while Zayn grinned to himself in the driver’s seat.

“Hey,” Harry says, “I wanna ride you on the sand… Can we put a big towel down and do that? I’m thinking about, like, the breeze on me, naked…”

“Someone could see.”

“Maybe.”

“That don’t bother you? It usually does.”

“Alright, we’ll do it tonight, then. When it’s dark.”

“Smart, yeah.”

“Touch me now, though, I want your hands on me…”

Zayn sidles up behind Harry, spooning him, and starts kissing the sweaty, tanned back of his neck. He shifts his hips, rubbing his cock on Harry’s arse, and Harry moans softly.

“Go fast,” he sighs. “I need you in me.”

“Yeah?” Zayn rasps, reaching for the lube they already used last night, on the plane and then again after they arrived. He tugs the sarong down off of him, then the trunks, and gives him a squeeze on the arse.

“I do, I need you so much, all the time…”

“I need you too, baby...”

Zayn works his way into him, tender but not too tender, slow but not too slow. He starts to move his hips, and Harry makes soft sounds of encouragement, wrapping his hand around the edge of the bed and gripping it so hard Zayn can see the tendons stand out.

He kisses the back of his neck more, the nape of it, then moves up to lick and suck hickies on the spot where his shoulder begins and the delicate skin of his throat. Harry writhes against him, clenching on his cock.

“Zayn,” he says pitifully, “I’m so hard. Please.”

Zayn, breathing heavily as he works his hips, reaches down and wraps a hand around Harry’s cock. “I can feel… what’s gotten into you?”

Harry reaches behind himself and strokes Zayn’s hair, ruffling it against the grain. Zayn fucks him harder, wanting him to feel good. He likes fucking this way, on their sides — Harry’s extra tight, and he likes kissing him on the shoulder and spooning him.

“Nothing,” Harry breathes.

“Yeah?”

“Just feeling needy…”

Zayn chuckles and sucks at a spot under his ear. Harry shudders against him. “Needy… what do I ‘ave to do to make you feel loved? Die for you?”

Harry lets out a hitching laugh. “Please don’t.”

“I’ll do it.” He pumps his hips harder; he’s getting close. “Just find me a murderer on this island, or something… a riptide I can save you from an’ drown in, like…”

“No, no… don’t say that…”

Zayn comes, biting down on Harry’s shoulder as he does. Harry clenches around him, and Zayn groans as ecstasy throbs at the corners of his mind before fading blissfully.

“Good boy,” Harry says, his voice very low.

Zayn nudges him to roll over, and he does, pressing up against him, burying his face in Zayn’s clavicle and pressing his pregnant belly into Zayn’s ribcage. His body is so warm, his blood hotter from the baby and his skin toasted by the sun, that Zayn sort of wishes there was a fan blowing on them or something. Maybe Harry had a point about the breeze.

Zayn agreeably jerks him off though, with languorous gestures. Harry’s very fun to jerk off, today; he reacts so spastically to every little touch. Zayn rubs the pad of his thumb over Harry’s tip, and Harry grips him like he’s a life preserver and moans loudly.

He comes a lot, and everywhere, all over both of them. The bed already stinks of sex, and Zayn gets sort of excited imagining just how disgusting and crusty it’s going to be by the end of the day.

Harry kisses Zayn’s throat. “I do feel loved,” he says. “Promise.”

Zayn cradles the back of his head, running his fingernails over his scalp. “But d’you feel _good_?”

“Oh,” he purrs, “I feel fantastic.”

 

MALIBU, JANUARY 2, 2028

“So,” Georgia says, palming her Leica back and forth, “how intimate do we want?”

“Really intimate,” Harry says, hovering at the foot of the bed. Zayn lies against a downy, thick layer of pillows, watching him. “These are just for us, we’re not showing them to anyone.”

“So, like, boudoir?”

“Nah, I don’t wanna take my clothes off,” Harry says. “I just want to, like. Cuddle with Zayn.”

Zayn spreads his arms in kind. Harry glances over at him and grins. He’s all tan and lovely from their holiday.

“Hey,” Georgia says, “you paid for me, you got me. Your house, your shoot. Although you know I would’ve done this for you for free, Harry.”

“Nah, you should get paid for your time, love.”

Georgia goes over to the balcony doors and throws the curtains open; harsh early afternoon sunlight pours in. She leans a massive rectangular diffuser against the glass, and the light softens.

“Oh, I like that,” Harry says. “That’ll be nice...”

He kneels onto the bed and comes to Zayn, settling in his arms with the grace of a crane, nuzzling his face into the crook of Zayn’s neck.

Zayn wraps an arm around him. He lets his other hand drop to Harry’s bump, and settles it there, fingers splayed out across the taut skin.

Harry lets out a soft sigh and kisses him. “Yeah, like that.”

Georgia picks her camera back up and kneels on the edge of the bed, holding it to her eye. Zayn tries not to reflexively pose, and instead just cuddles closer to Harry, stroking his back with the tip of his thumb and pressing kisses to his hairline. The shutter begins to click.

Harry tips his head back to look at Zayn, his eyes glowing. “Love you,” he mouths.

“Love you too,” Zayn murmurs back.

“Good,” Georgia says in a low voice, snapping away.

Harry arches into Zayn, nosing at his clavicle.

“Zayn, you wanna take your shirt off?” she adds.

Zayn looks blearily up at her. “Sure,” he says, and shrugs it off over his head.

Harry reaches up and takes his face in both hands, searching his eyes with a half-lidded look, then kisses him. Zayn kisses him back hard, pressing his tongue into his hot mouth and sucking at his lower lip.

Georgia creeps closer to them, snapping more photos. Zayn has his eyes closed, so he can’t see her — just hear the soft thunk of the shutter and feel the weight of her on the bed.

“Touch his stomach,” she urges.

Zayn doesn’t like being ordered to, but he pushes Harry’s soft shirt up with the side of his hand and cups it to his skin. Harry takes him by the wrist and moves it down slightly, where he feels a little foot nudging up against Harry’s skin.

“These are gorgeous,” Georgia whispers.

“How can you tell,” Harry says, breaking away from Zayn and glancing at her. He sounds amused; his lips are all pink from kissing. “It’s film…”

She grins. “I just know.”

 

*

 

They get back the proofs two days later. She sends them in the post, printed on thick stock, which Harry thinks is delightfully old school. He finds Zayn in their home studio to show him them; Zayn slides his headphones off and rolls his chair closer to take a look.

They’re lovely photos, developed in rich black and white. Harry loves Zayn’s face in them — how devoted he looks, how besotted. Even if someday the shine wears off, even if the honeymoon someday ends, he’ll always have proof that Zayn was once madly in love with him, and that he felt the same. That at one point he looked at Zayn like he held the world in his palms. But he hopes he always looks at him like that.

Harry’s even more sure now that he doesn’t want anyone else to see these. They’re special. Privacy has been hard to come by lately — he’s stalked almost everywhere he goes. Everyone wants him to answer for his absence over the last year; everyone wants a bump photo. If he’s out with Zayn, it’s even worse.

“These came out so good,” Zayn says, finally taking his eyes off them and and handing the stack back to Harry.

“They did,” Harry agrees. “What’re you working on?”

Zayn hands him the headphones. “Pull up a chair, I’ll give you a listen.”

 

MALIBU, FEBRUARY 10, 2028

They finally bring Toni home on a cool, bright Thursday morning. Harry sits in the backseat with her and tickles her little feet, making her laugh so she doesn’t fret over her fresh separation from Sharon. He sings to her, little fragments of lullabies and whatever lyrics pop into his head while Zayn drives them very slowly up the PCH.

When he pulls into the driveway of their sprawling beachside home, Zayn turns and says to Toni, “Will this do for you, ladybug?”

Harry smiles at him. “I think she could use a nap… wanna all go take a nap together?”

“Yeah, love to.”

Zayn comes around to his side and opens the door for him, helping him gingerly down. Harry takes a few steps back on the cobblestone driveway and watches as Zayn struggles with removing the baby seat.

“Sorry I can't help,” Harry says, smoothing his hands over his middle.

He’s pregnant enough now that he’s no longer meant to lift things. He loves all these little milestones, as ordinary and inconvenient as they are. He has to pee constantly, he can’t bring in the groceries, he’s always itchy and his back is a mess — it’s all brilliant in his book, all to be cherished. He has a moleskine journal where he writes all his symptoms down, no matter how unpleasant. The other day was _Pins and needles in my arm all morning & weird tummy, and then threw up in the garden and felt better :-)_

“Nah, love,” Zayn says, breathing heavily as he wrestles with it, “no worries.”

 

*

 

Toni dozes back off as soon as they get her settled in her crib. Harry watches over her as he lies on his side in their bed, making sure her chest continues to rise and fall.

“Relax,” Zayn whispers, kissing him on the shoulder. “Have a snooze.”

“I can’t be as calm as you… I’ve never done this before…”

“It’s always the same, babes. They sleep, they wake up, they sleep, they wake up. After a while you’re too tired to keep worryin’.”

He lays down behind Harry and spoons up against him, kissing and petting him. Harry lets his exhausted eyelids droop.

“That’s it,” Zayn whispers.

 

*

 

Harry wakes blearily and glances out the window. The sun is lower in the sky, now, and Zayn’s left their bed. He checks his phone. It’s four.

Toni is still sleeping with angelic soundness in her crib, so it can’t be her that woke him. A moment later, he realized it was the noises from downstairs that did it. Zayn’s home with the kids.

Harry makes sure the baby monitor is on (Zayn must have taken the receiver with him, because it’s vanished from the bedside table) and slowly rouses himself from bed like a hibernating bear. The abrupt change in his center of gravity has been disorienting. He’s used to being achy and gawky but athletic, light on his feet like a clumsy ballerina.

He quickly pulls some joggers on and ducks into the bathroom to make himself presentable, then goes over to Toni. His instinct is not to wake her up, but he’s so happy to have her here, he can’t help but lean over and drop a kiss on her little forehead. She coos.

“Welcome home,” Harry whispers, beaming. “You’re the best birthday present.”

 

*

 

Downstairs, Zayn has organized an art project as he sometimes does. He’s laid a white tarp down on the sitting room floor and a canvas over top of it that the kids are painting on with wild abandon, flicking it in splatters and mixing colors together that aren’t meant to be mixed. Harry comes over and settles onto the couch, watching them at work for a while. Finally he looks up at Zayn and mouths, _Wanna have them meet her?_

Zayn nods. “Kids,” he says.

Mia looks up. She has a smear of yellow on her cheek. Amir continues to paint, looking about as dour as a ten-year-old can.

“You want to meet the baby?”

“Yeah!” Mia says, jumping up. “Definitely.”

“Wash your hands, first,” Zayn says.

She hurries off into the other room. Amir still doesn’t look up at his father.

“Meer?” Zayn says.

Amir shrugs. “I guess.”

“Alright, go wash your hands too, then.”

He tosses the paintbrush onto the tarp with a flick of his wrist, and follows his sister.

 

*

 

They find Toni stirring in her crib, and she stretches her arms up to them when the peer over her. Zayn collects her, and Harry tucks a spit-up cloth over his shoulder for him. They bring her downstairs, then, bringing her ceremonially over to the waiting children like she’s a birthday cake.

Zayn gives her to Mia, first. She’s practiced with holding babies by now, and right away supports her head and cradles her tight.

“Dad,” she exclaims. “She’s cute!”

“Isn’t she?” Zayn says, smiling.

“Cuter than in the pictures you showed us,” Mia adds cheekily. “You’re not good at taking pictures of her, you should let me do it.”

He laughs. “Alright, love, you’re her new official photographer.”

Amir peers over Mia’s shoulder, seeming unmoved. Mia blows a raspberry at Toni, who laughs and babbles at her.

“Hi,” Mia says, smiling. “Hi little sister.”

Toni reaches up with a clumsy little hand and grabs at her shirt. Mia’s smile widens.

Harry, who’s being kicked hard by the baby, shuffles over to an armchair and eases himself into it. He’s relieved to see the two of them bonding, although he didn’t have many reservations about that to begin with. Mia’s taken to her oldest child responsibilities like a duck to water. She seems to like having a designated and certain role, a purpose in the chaos.

Amir reaches out and strokes Toni’s cheek. He’s got a very Louis-like expression on: a sort of snakebit look, the look of someone working overtime to figure out how they feel about something before they have to react to it.

“Wanna hold her?” Harry says to him.

Amir glances up. “I’m okay,” he says. “Where’d she come from, again?”

Zayn, who’s sat on his left, clears his throat. “We adopted her through an agency. Someone left her at a fire station.”

“Someone?”

“We don’t know who, obviously.”

“So why are you taking her?”

Harry and Zayn exchange a look.

“Well, she’s a baby,” Harry says. “And we wanted a baby.”

“But you’re already having a baby,” Amir points out.

Zayn rubs Amir’s back. “It’s complicated.”

Harry stretches, then says, “Can I have a minute alone with Amir?”

Zayn and Mia look up at him, and then Mia turns to her father as if curious to see how he’ll react.

But all Zayn says is “Sure,” and takes Toni from Mia so she can bounce to her feet, her ever-present ponytail swinging. Amir looks down at his phone.

Harry reaches his arms out for the baby, and Zayn delivers her. She gets a bit fussy, but calms down after a moment. She likes Harry.

“We’ll be out front,” Zayn whispers. “I’m gonna go check if your Rolls is still makin’ that weird noise.”

“Thanks, babe.”

When they’re gone, Amir looks up at him, seeming apprehensive.

“Can I join you?” Harry says in a gentle voice.

“Yeah,” Amir says.

Harry gets up with a groan and comes over to settle on the sofa next to him. The couch looks austere, but is actually incredibly soft — a modernist dark gray cloud. They patterned the entire sitting room after it, doing it in shades of thunderstorm. It’s a cozy cave when the shutters are closed, but beautifully chic when they’re open and the California sun is setting over the ocean, spilling in.

Harry lowers his right arm, tipping Toni, who is still sleepy and looks up at him with bemusement. “Sure you don’t want to take her for a moment?”

Amir glances sidelong at her. “I’m so sick of babies,” he mutters.

“Are you?”

“Yeah. The twins just got done being babies, and they’re _still_ annoying.”

Harry bounces Toni a bit. “This one’s not being annoying, is she?”

“She’s gonna cry,” Amir accuses.

“She’s not right now.”

“But she’s gonna.”

“We all cry when we’re babies.”

“But why do I have to put up with it?”

“‘Cos hopefully someday, when she’s done crying and has a bit more personality to her, she might be someone you like to spend time with, like Mia.”

“It won’t be like Mia,” Amir says. “Mia’s my sister.”

“Toni’s your sister, too.”

“Not the same.”

“‘Cos she’s adopted?”

“No, ‘cos she’s a half-sister, ‘cos you’re not my dad,” Amir snaps.

Harry sighs, stung. The baby wriggles in his arms, and he reshuffles her, holding her to his chest. “I know I’m not,” he says. “I’m not trying to be.”

“Yeah, you are!” Amir hops off the couch and walks away from him, settling onto the floor. His handsome little face is set in frustration, but more than anything he looks to be on the verge of tears. “You took my dad away all last summer! He’s not _yours_ , he’s _ours_! You can’t just take him away from us to make a new family with!”

“Amir, you’re part of my family with him,” Harry says, trying to keep his voice even and soft so the baby doesn’t start up. “You and Mia are a massive part of our lives. I love you. I want you to be happy and comfortable here.”

“That’s not true! You wouldn’t ignore me all summer if you cared! You wouldn’t send my dad over to my other dad’s house to visit if you wanted me!”

Toni squirms and babbles unhappily. Harry carries her over to a bassinet near the fireplace and lays her in it, murmuring to her, then returns to the couch and rubs at his eyes. A familiar headache is creeping up his neck and into his head, turning his blood to fizz, making words difficult.

“Amir,” he says. “C’mere.”

"No..."

“Please come here.”

Amir swallows, then gets up and stumbles over to him, swiping at his cheeks. Harry reaches out and wraps him up in a hug as soon as he’s close enough. He thinks of something Nick said once, about how he hugs like a spider pulling prey into its web, and has to try not to laugh.

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispers, stroking his hair. “I know how you feel.”

”No you don’t.”

”I do. My parents split up when I was young, too. I get it.”

Amir’s quiet. 

“The last thing I wanted to do was make you feel like you weren’t wanted here. It’s honestly the opposite. I can’t explain what was going on, it’s adult things, and I don’t want to upset you, alright? But I was in a bad way, and I couldn’t be a good stepdad to you. I didn’t want to scare or worry you or your sister. And I really needed your dad.”

“For what?” Amir murmurs.

Harry wipes his tears off his cheek. “Just for his support. And he hated not having you two over. He missed you every weekend.”

“But now you’re having all these babies,” Amir says, squirming in his arms. “He won’t even need us anymore.”

Harry lets him pull back, and strokes his dark hair again. “It’s not to replace you. Never to replace you. Liam and Louis didn’t replace you with the twins, did they?”

Amir rolls his eyes. “I guess not, but they’re really annoying.”

“Aw, kid.”

“And Patrick bites.”

“Mmm,” Harry says. “Reckon that’s just a phase, or so I’d hope.”

“Is this gonna bite?” Amir says, looking down at Harry’s middle.

Harry laughs. “No, not ‘til she gets teeth, at least. But, look… you love them, yeah? The twins?”

Amir shrugs.

“I know you do,” Harry says, not unkindly.

“I guess.” Amir flings himself theatrically back onto the couch, his dark hair flopping. “It’s just, do I have to have _so_ many siblings?”

Harry laughs. “I dunno what to tell you on that one. More people to love, right?”

“So… is Toni an orphan?”

“What?”

“Like Harry Potter? Is she an orphan?”

“No,” Harry says. “I don’t think so, at least... She probably has biological parents out there somewhere.”

“Oh,” Amir says, sitting up on his elbows. “But they can’t come take her back?”

“No, they gave up their rights to her. We’re her legal parents, now.”

“That’s really sad.”

Harry cracks a smile. “That she’s stuck with me and your dad for parents?”

“No, that her real parents don’t want her.”

“It is sad, yeah.”

“Why would somebody give their baby away?”

“Sometimes people do desperate things. Not everyone has the money for kids.” He clears his throat and settles his hands on his bump. “Whoever left her… they did wrap her in a blanket, and leave her somewhere safe.”

“So maybe they did love her,” Amir says, like he really wants for this to be true. “My dads always put blankets on me.”

Harry smiles at him. “Yeah... you get cold so easy, California boy.”

Amir laughs. He has Louis’ laugh; it often makes Harry sad to hear, for reasons he's not entirely sure of.

 

*

 

In the kitchen after dinner, Zayn stands in relative darkness, cleaning the dishes by hand. He does this sometimes — he says it helps him think. That’s where Harry finds him, methodically scraping glutinous sticky rice off a bone china dish.

“Hullo,” he says. “Kids are watching telly.”

Zayn nods. “Okay.”

Harry leans on the counter next to him, resting his elbow on it so he can take some of the pressure off his pelvis.

“Hey, uh…” Zayn glances up at him. “He’s angry with me, you know. Not you.”

They had briefly discussed Amir’s outburst while they were cooking, but they were interrupted by Mia running in with five pairs of sunglasses on her head in an attempt to make them laugh.

“Oh,” Harry says lightly, “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Trust me. He was just taking it out on you, ‘cos you’re an easier target.”

“Am I?”

Zayn nods. “You’re less strict with him, you don’t have the authority of bein’ his actual parent... Can you hand me that mug on the island there?”

Harry complies. “I think we had a good talk, regardless.”

“No, it sounds like it.” Zayn aims the sink sprayer into the mug. “I just don’t want you taking it personally.”

“Maybe I ought to. I stole his dad away for an entire summer.”

“You didn’t _steal_ me, it ain’t like I didn’t see them.”

“But you’ve been over at Liam and Louis’ lately, you know how overburdened they are, you know they couldn’t‘ve been giving all five of those kids their undivided attention.”

Zayn shrugs. “Is it reasonable to expect parents to always be able to give their kids their undivided attention? I mean, I took this summer to heart, too, I want to make it up to them, but it was a shit situation, and we did our best. I grew up in the middle of three sisters, I helped take care of the little ones, I didn’t have my dad paying attention to me and nursemaidin’ me all day long. He fucking worked for a living, y’know? And for you, your dad wasn’t always around, but did either of us turn out terrible?”

“I mean, not to be a whiner, but I think my home life had a bit of an effect on my romantic life,” Harry says drily. “I didn’t take the most straightforward route.”

“Ah, Haz, I’ve been divorced too, it’s whatever.”

“Anyway, more to the point, I think Amir’s like you, and chaos just gets to him. I don’t think it bothers Mia as much.”

Zayn starts drying the plate that’s  in his hand. “It’s just such a white American thing, culturally, these ideas about parenting. You’re not your kid’s best friend, you’re not their butler. He’s part of this family, not the star of it. And he’s growing up, now. I hear what you’re saying, and you know I love that kid to death, I’d do anything for him. But it’s ‘cos of how much I love him that I want ‘im to develop grit. He’s my only son, y’know? I’m just so fuckin’ afraid of them turning into these pathetic child of celebrity trust fund cases you see around here, these useless drugged-up whiners. Me and Louis used to talk about that, it’s always been a fear for me.”

Harry doesn't quite know what to say to this, so he silently reaches out for Zayn’s wrist and brings his palm to the swell of his tummy. Zayn smiles.

“I know,” Harry says.

“Do you?”

“Yeah! You think I don’t worry about my stepkids?”

“Nah, mate, it’s just different from being a parent.”

“Well, I’m a parent _now_ ,” Harry argues. “We have a baby upstairs, and what d’you think is under your hand?”

Zayn laughs. “I started ‘avin’ kids young, love. My kids are little people now. Yasmeen’s gonna be a teenager in two years. So it’s on my mind more, is all.”

“Shit, she is, isn't she?” Harry laces his fingers in Zayn’s. “Are we really that old? Feels like last week Louis was calling the ‘I’m pregnant’ band meeting.”

“You all had a band meeting about that?”

“‘Course we did, it was sort of a big deal…”

“Right. Imagine it was.” He’s quiet for a moment. “What’d he say?”

Harry shrugs. “Just that he was pregnant, and it was yours. We rowed a bit, and then I asked if he was keeping it, and he said he was leaning that way. And that was it.”

“Wait,” he says slowly. “Was that right after he found out?”

“Yeah.”

Zayn’s brow knits. “Never realized he made up his mind about it that fast.”

It still hurts Harry somewhat to recall all this. “You moved fast in a lot of ways, you two,” he points out.

“Yeah. Think we conceived Yasmeen in about two minutes.”

Harry snorts. “You spermy maniac.”

“Hey, you’re glad for my spermy arse now that we’ve put a bun in your oven, aren’t you?”

“Did you just say _spermy arse_?”

“Aye, I’ll give you a spermy arse,” Zayn threatens, then starts tickling him. Harry laughs and slaps at his forearm.

 

MARINA DEL REY, MARCH 1, 2028

The not-baby shower has nearly drawn to a close when Liam and Louis finally show up. Harry spots them weaving through the other guests, who are either leaving or too drunk to stand, leaning on the wood-paneled walls of the yacht club rumpus room in lieu of working spines as they pound the last of the chardonnay.

“Oi,” he shouts at them.

Louis grins. He’s walking out in front of Liam, carrying a gift in a big white box, tied with a gold bow. “Oi!” he shouts back.

Zayn, who’s dozed off in the chair next to Harry, stirs. “Wha,” he says.

“Your ex-husband’s arrived,” Harry says.

Zayn straightens up, running a hand through his messy hair. “Has he, then?”

Louis tosses their gift onto the table and collapses into a chair like a rag doll that’s been thrown. “Sorry we’re so late,” he says as Liam settles down next to him. “Sunday had a horse show, we didn’t even get back to the house ‘til six. Nuttery.”

“It’s all good,” Harry says. “You just missed a lot of drinking, and a bit of weeping from me.”

“Zayn didn’t tell us ‘e was throwing this ‘til two days ago,” Louis adds.

Zayn puts his hands up. “I didn’t know I was throwin’ it ‘til then, myself.”

“Yeah, this was quite the surprise,” Harry says, smiling over at him. “Didn’t even think this many of my friends were in town… but it came together really well.”

“First time I’d even thrown one, too,” Zayn says. He gestures at Louis. “This one over here never wanted one.”

Louis laughs. “‘Cos that’s what I want when I’m fat and cranky and exhausted, is everybody I know playing pin the fuckin’ donkey on me.”

“Pin the fuckin’ donkey?” Harry repeats in amusement. “Never heard of that one.”

“Ah, you know what I mean…”

“Hi there Liam,” Harry says.

“Hey,” Liam says, and blinks hard. “Sorry, I’m low on sleep, zoned out a bit.”

“Ah, we’re just glad you’re here.”

“Absolutely! Happy baby, boys.”

“Happy baby,” Louis echoes.

“Babystagram,” Harry sings.

Louis laughs. “So you said it’s a girl, right? I mean obviously, you’ve got all this pink going…”

“Girl, yeah,” Zayn confirms, reaching over to settle a hand on Harry’s middle.

Louis nods. There’s a flicker of melancholy in his blue eyes, but it’s gone the second Harry notices it. He thumps his palm on the top of the box. “Um, we got you this crazy vacuum. Sucks up anythin’, this thing.”

“Oh, that oughta come in handy,” Zayn says.

“Sucks up entire diapers, probably,” Liam jokes. “We haven’t tested that yet. But we’ve got one ourselves… got it the day Max smushed an entire box of Cheez-Its into the parlor carpet.”

Harry laughs. His friend Julia (the newly minted deputy editor of _Vogue_ ) breaks off from the drunken crowd, then, leaving her husband to get sucked into conversation with a tipsy Ben and Meredith.

“Hii,” Julia says, leaning down to wrap him up in a hug. “Sorry, we got here late, so I just wanted to come over and say congratulations!”

“Thanks, love, and no worries,” Harry says, squeezing her arm. “Just happy to have you here.”

“Yeah, this was a really nice little event. More like a cocktail party than a baby shower —“

“‘Cos it’s _not_ a shower,” Zayn interjects. “It’s a party.”

“We’re trying not to jinx anything,” Harry explains.

“Ohhh,” she says. “Well, whatever it is, it was very you guys.”

“All the credit to Zayn, it was a total surprise for me.”

Julia gives Zayn a twinkling smile. “Nice job, Zayn, seriously.”

Zayn gives her a little salute. “Did my best,” he says.

Julia tips her champagne flute in kind. “Anyway, we’re heading out, but text me when she’s, y’know, here! I want pictures! I’m sure she’ll be gorgeous.”

He laughs. “Pictures,” he promises, and they kiss goodbye French-style, one on each cheek.

“Charmer,” Julia admonishes him, then swans off.

When she’s gone, Harry realizes everyone is looking at him in amusement.

“What?” he says.

Liam and Louis immediately start mocking him, doing exaggerated air kisses. “ _Mwah, mwah_ …”

Zayn stifles a snort.

“Oh, fuck off,” Harry says through his laughter.

 

*

 

Harry steps outside a few minutes later for fresh air. He’s been having these claustrophobic anxiety attacks lately, that come on only when he’s in a room full of people. It’s at its worst when he’s mobbed by fans, but it’s even happened when he was out at breakfast and the waiter leaned in too close.

He blames part of it on him and Zayn watching that fucking _mother!_ movie when he was about six months pregnant — in particular that scene where she has the baby and then the crowd tears it to shreds in front of her. It made his skin crawl, and he kept getting up to check on Toni all night.

He wanders down to the beach. A strong wind is blowing, and it whips his hair wildly, but he doesn’t mind. The recycled air in the yacht club was choking him, and he’s sweaty, besides. It’s nice out here — the sun is going down behind a blanket of dark blue clouds, and the sea is energetic, full of whitecaps and lapping ferociously at the shore.

Harry takes a clumsy seat in the sand and lies back, cupping his hands to either sides of his bump. The baby is lightly kicking on the left, little pulsing kicks, like she’s probing the structural integrity of his body.

“Hi sweetheart,” Harry says aloud. “Just had a party for you… sorry you couldn’t come, but we’ll have loads more, I promise, for you and your sister both. Whole lifetime of parties.”

He falls quiet when he hears footsteps behind him.

“That’s a lot of parties,” Zayn says softly.

Harry cranes his neck up and smiles. Zayn settles down next to him in the sand.

“Tide’s comin’ up pretty high,” he mutters, pulling his legs to his chest.

“The ocean's not gonna get you, you weenie,” Harry teases.

Zayn nudges his shoulder, but otherwise ignores the jab. “Just talked to Greta,” he says. “Toni’s doing fine. Crawling around like a maniac.”

“She’s _so_ advanced,” Harry says, beaming. “We should put her down for Eton.”

“How’s the other baby?”

“Good. Kicking me.”

“Sorry, love.”

“No, it’s good, I don’t mind,” Harry murmurs, stroking his fingers over the fabric of his stretchy black shirt. He can feel the outline of her foot nudging at him. “Lets me know she’s okay. What made you come out?”

“Looking for you… and people keep offering me alcohol, so.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“It’s alright. Can’t expect everyone to remember.” Zayn settles down next to him, stretching his slender limbs out on the sand and yawning. “You down for some more beach sex?”

“Yeah, absolutely.” He pats his thigh. “Come and get it, cowboy.”

Zayn grins. “Your nipples are hard.”

“‘Cos it’s chilly out!”

“Can’t wait to fuck you when that baby’s out,” he says with relish. “I’m countin’ down the days. I miss you.”

“How much?” Harry teases.

“A lot. Loads.”

“Enough to not jerk off until you can fuck me again?”

Zayn lifts his eyebrows. “You want me to do that?”

It hadn’t occurred to Harry until he said it, but he finds he likes the idea. “Yeah… why not? Be sort of sexy. Then when we finally get to, you’re just like, this _animal_ … tearing my clothes off, throwing me down…”

Zayn’s expression has changed. His lips are slightly parted. “Yeah,” he says roughly. “Yeah, that’d be hot...”

“Alright,” Harry says, playing coy. “Let’s do that.”

 

MALIBU, APRIL 12, 2028

Harry lies alone in bed with the baby, listening as Zayn and his birthing team putter around down the hall.

He’s feeling good. Once Marlena was safely delivered, a large-eyed and lobster-red squalling little thing, he’d finally allowed the midwife to minister some painkilling drugs to him. They hit his mostly empty stomach hard, and now he’s a tinge nauseated but otherwise blissful. She’s been quiet since they fed her, and now her eyes are fully open. She stares at Harry like a tiny drunk, head-bobbing, squinting to see him.

She came into the world perfect. Lorenza had confirmed it with a 9.9 Apgar score, as well as a more editorial exclamation of, “She’s perfect!”

“You _are_ perfect,” Harry murmurs to her.

Marlena fidgets at the sound of his voice. He closes his eyes for a moment, and leans against the headboard, which has been buffeted by about ten pillows. Zayn had made a nest for him and helped him into it as soon as the entire affair was over.

“Use club soda,” Harry mumbled to Zayn as he tucked a blanket up around his waist. “On the blood.”

Like Jesus coming down off the cross, he’d staggered out of the tub without it occurring to him that he was still bleeding. Such an absurdly messy affair, it was. Anyway, there was blood everywhere after, on the tile and carpet and his dressing gown. The last glance of the scene that he caught over his shoulder as they hurried him off to lie down looked like the cover of an Agatha Christie novel.

“Don’t worry about that shit,” Zayn said to him. “Let us worry about that.”

Harry agreed, then asked for his baby.

That was about twenty minutes ago now that Zayn deposited her tiny swaddled form in his arms, and he hasn’t been able to get enough of her yet. He’s just been staring and staring as he lies here, the marathon-runner ache in his body growing more distant as he memorizes her face. He’s absolutely besotted. His only want is for Toni, who’s napping in the nursery, to be in the crook of his other arm. Then he’d at last be satisfied, ballasted by daughters. He’d probably drop off to sleep like a rock.

Zayn comes back, sleepy-eyed, his jumper sleeves pushed up to the elbow. He kneels onto the bed by Harry’s feet.

“How is she?” he whispers.

“Wonderful,” Harry says, giving him a Dilaudid-slippery smile. “Hasn’t cried once since we’ve been chilling here.”

Zayn smiles. “You want me to take her, love? You’ve got to be exhausted.”

“Am I?” Harry coos to Marlena. “Am I exhausted?”

The whole ordeal didn’t take very long, mercifully. He had his first real pain in bed that morning, very early; he grabbed Zayn’s shoulder hard, and when Zayn jerked awake, he sleepily said, “I’m, ah, in labor?”

“Oh shit,” Zayn said, “shit.”

But there was still about fifteen minutes between each one, and everything was set up to do it here at home, so they had just sort of shrugged and snuggled back up together. Zayn turned on the TV and played GTA VII while Harry lay in the crook of his arm, offering his input on which cars to steal.

Zayn reaches out and tucks the blanket more securely around Marlena with a gentle hand.

“Come cuddle with us,” Harry murmurs.

Zayn gives him a smile and comes around his side, climbing up into the bed beside him. Harry sags against Zayn, who presses a kiss to his cheek.

“She looks so much like you,” Zayn says in a tender voice. “God, she’s like a mini-you.”

“Really?” Harry says in delight. “You think?”

“Yeah, mate, look at her eyes, ‘er mouth…”

Harry gazes down at her little face. He supposes Zayn is right.

“She looks like you too,” he says. “She’s pointier than me.”

Zayn chokes out a laugh. “ _Pointier…_ Christ…”

“You see it, right?”

“Yeah, just never been called _pointy_ before…” Zayn reaches out and holds her tiny hand in two of his fingers. Her own fingers close around his thumb, and he smiles wide, his eyes glowing gold.

“Hi little daughter,” he says, his voice a whisper.

“You sure you’re alright with the name?” Harry says.

“Love, you could’ve said ‘let’s name her Tortellini’ and I’d be on board. I’m just so relieved she’s alright and fuckin’ here.”

Harry laughs. “Hey, Marlena’s a sight nicer than _Tortellini_.”

“I know. No, it’s pretty."

Harry had, in a brief moment of sleep-deprived insanity, considered naming her Aquarius. His friends gently talked him out of this.

“Think it suits her,” Zayn says. “She’s beautiful.”

“She’s perfect,” Harry whispers.

“She is.”

They fall quiet for a moment, just gazing at her face. She looks blearily back up at them.

“You’re sweaty,” Zayn says to Harry, stroking his hair. “You want a shower?”

“In  _our_ bathroom?”

“Well, Lorenza packed up all her things, and me an’ the maid scrubbed everythin’ down. So it’s back to normal.”

“Oh... Thanks, love."

“What, I’m gonna make you scrub down a bathroom when you just ‘ad a baby?”

Harry laughs. “Still, thanks,” he says. “For holding my hand, and not fainting.”

Zayn presses his nose to Harry’s hair, exhaling warm breath against the stringy waves and making him shiver down his neck. “ _Faint_? Give me some credit, I did deliver my first kid with my bare fuckin’ ‘ands. We rolled up to the hospital covered in blood, my mum nearly shit herself when she saw me.”

“That’s right,” he murmurs, “I always forget about that.”

Marlena fusses a little in Harry’s arms.

“It’s okay,” he coos to her. “Everything’s alright, baby love. Zayn, could you get Toni? Not if she’s, like, dead asleep, but if she’s up… I wanna have a little family time, all of us.”

Zayn presses another kiss to his cheek. “Yeah,” he says in a hoarse voice, and slides out from under the covers, walking light-footed into the hall.

Marlena, soothed, makes a soft hiccuping sound and stares up at Harry some more.

“Yeah, that’s your daddy, love,” Harry whispers to her. “Long time in the making for us, you are.”


End file.
